What’s Your Black Widow?

I recently received a call from Beth, my wife, that our one year old little girl had almost been bitten by a Black Widow. I could hear both tension and utter relief in her voice.

She said that as she was cleaning the garage, she noticed Emma crouching in the corner reaching for something.

We all know what happens when a one year old picks something up; it goes straight in the mouth.

To my wife’s horror, she was reaching for a Black Widow!

Beth snatched Emma up and took her inside.

This is when I received the call.

I could tell Beth was still freaking out inside. She let me know that Emma was okay, but she wanted that spider to die! Being that I work less than two miles from home, Beth asked if I could come home and kill the eight legged beast. It was an extremely busy day at the office so coming home was a no go, but I promised that I would take care of it as soon as I got off work.

When I walked in the house, I found that the spider had already been apprehended (picture at top of page).

While she was afraid to kill the spider, she had somehow managed to corner, capture, and preserve the Black Widow until I got home.

She had it sitting on the kitchen counter like some kind of trophy!

When I asked why she had not killed it, she told me that she was afraid it.

“Afraid of what?” I said. “You trapped it, and it is sitting on our counter. How could you be afraid?”

She went on to tell me that she had never killed a Black Widow or any poisonous spider for that matter.

Her fear was not necessarily of the spider.

Her fear was the unknown.

How many things, like that spider on our counter, do we allow to linger in our lives that we know could hurt us?

We too often allow unhealthy things to hang around in our lives. Why do we do this? Most times, like my wife and the Black Widow, we are unsure how to deal with them.

It is easy to look at people addicted to drugs or alcohol and point our righteous fingers in disgust.

We often view these people as being somehow below us, as if they are somehow worse off than we are.

They are addicted to something that has absolute control over their lives. Their entire existence often revolves around the next high or a better buzz.

We look at them in pity, all the while keeping our own poison close at hand.

Your poison can be anything.

It can be “big things” like a drug problem or a relationship outside of marriage that has gone too far, or it can be a “small thing” such as pride or a problem with gossip.

In actuality there are no “big” or “small” things. Just those that seem to cause larger problems once discovered.

Do you know what makes a poisonous spider so dangerous? Obviously the poison, but even more so than that is the fact that they are small.

Because they are so small we often do not even realize they are around.

The same is true with our personal vices.

The difference between a drug addict and a gossiping person is the drug addict many times realizes they have a problem.

If there was a bear in your living room, you may not exactly know how to handle the problem, but you would definitely know one existed.

If the story stayed the same except we switched the bear for a Black Widow, would you know it was there?

The “small things” like gossiping and pride are so extremely dangerous because, just like the Black Widow, they are difficult to detect.

While gossip, pride, or an addiction may not be your problem, you and I do have them.

I did eventually get rid of the Black Widow.

I flushed it.

What is it in your life that needs to be done away with? What is it that you are allowing to linger on your counter?